Matthews Southern Comfort

Ian Matthews had been a member of Fairport Convention between 1967 and 1969, singing vocals on the band's first two albums, alongside Judy Dyble on the self-titled Fairport Convention, and then with Sandy Denny on the widely acclaimed What We Did on Our Holidays after she had replaced Dyble as the lead female singer in 1968.

By the time of the recording of their third album Unhalfbricking in early 1969, Fairport, under Denny's influence, had largely abandoned their original American singer-songwriter material and were moving towards what would become known as English folk rock. The genre was somewhat alien to Matthews' tastes[10] leading to a discontent within Fairport that saw him essentially fired from the band after a meeting with producer Joe Boyd in February 1969. Matthews nevertheless continued to live in the same shared house in Brent as his former Fairport band members Richard Thompson and Simon Nicol and was paid a £20 per week retainer until he found his new path. In Fairport he had not played any instruments save the odd conga drum or Jew's harp; to counter this 'deficiency' he set about learning to play the guitar, being taught by no less than Richard Thompson.[11] He was still living with Thompson and Nicol at the time of the motorway crash in May 1969 that killed Fairport drummer Martin Lamble and Thompson's then girlfriend, Jeannie Franklyn.[12]

During the summer of 1969, after discussions with DJ John Peel (who had always championed Fairport's music),[13] Matthews decided that the singer-songwriter path was the direction he wanted to head in musically, and he thus recorded his debut solo album Matthews’ Southern Comfort at De Lane Lea Studios in London in November 1969. The musicians who played on it with Matthews were all stalwarts of the British folk rock scene and included his ex-Fairport colleagues Ashley Hutchings, Simon Nicol and Richard Thompson, plus Gerry Conway, the drummer from the folk rock band Fotheringay in which Sandy Denny was now the vocalist. Thompson was the original producer of the album, though Matthews himself later took over that role.[14]

The album was released in January 1970 on the Uni record label (a subsidiary of MCA Records) under the title Matthews’ Southern Comfort. Matthews Southern Comfort (without the apostrophe) were not yet a band at that stage and Matthews was not yet ready to go solo so the title was an all embracing attempt to encompass an album title and the collective of musicians that made it. As Matthews told author Ian Clayton in one of the interviews for their co-written 2018 book Thro’ My Eyes: A Memoir,[15][16] "it got me out of the dilemma of not wanting to go solo and it sounded like a band name". The album took its name from a song that Matthews liked, "Southern Comfort" by the Canadian folk duo Ian & Sylvia.

Most of the songs on the album were written by Matthews and his now managers Ken Howard and Alan Blaikley (under the assumed name Steve Barlby) who had previously written hit songs for the likes of The Honeycombs and Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich. To all intents and purposes the ‘first’ MSC album was an Ian Matthews solo album, and the touring and recording band Matthews Southern Comfort who went on to release two more albums, Second Spring and Later That Same Year, would not be formed until later, with only pedal steel player Gordon Huntley and Matthews appearing on all three albums.

Ian Matthews was friends with musician Marc Ellington,[17] who had guested on Fairport Convention's 1969 album Unhalfbricking, providing vocal support. Additionally, he had worked with Matthews on the Matthews’ Southern Comfort album in 1969, playing percussion. In the early part of 1970, at Ellington's suggestion, Matthews went to see a group called Harsh Reality who were about to be dropped by their record label, Philips. Mark Griffiths (lead guitar), Carl Barnwell (rhythm guitar) and Roger Swallow (drums) became the core of the band Matthews Southern Comfort and the session player Gordon Huntley, who had played pedal steel on the Matthews’ Southern Comfort album, was added. A young student called Pete Watkins, a bass player, completed the first line-up. Watkins, however, soon discovered that his studies were going to be affected and dropped out of the band, to be replaced by Andy Leigh who had just left the band Spooky Tooth. Not long after that Roger Swallow also decided he wanted to leave and he was replaced by Ray Duffy, late of the band Marmalade, who stood head and shoulders above the half dozen drummers who auditioned to be Swallow's replacement.[16]

This then was the band that became the final version of Matthews Southern Comfort and who recorded the albums Second Spring[18] and Later That Same Year. Their style of three-part harmonies mixed with country rock appealed to English music fans at the time and they toured the UK extensively, beginning in February 1970 with a gig at the Mothers club in Birmingham, a triple-header bill alongside Fairport Convention and Fotheringay.[19] A live performance of the band playing at a festival in Maidstone, Kent in 1970, again alongside Fairport Convention, was captured in a Tony Palmer film narrated by John Peel and released on DVD in 2007.[20] It was also released as a CD soundtrack in 2009.

MSC also recorded some nine radio sessions for the BBC, the best of which were eventually released on the 1994 album Scion.[21] These radio sessions were aired regularly on the BBC during 1970 on programmes such as 'Folk On One' and 'Top Gear'. The recordings also appeared on eight editions of a series of BBC Transcription Services discs called Various - Pick Of The Pops For Your D.J.. These discs at the time were typically only made available to overseas radio stations for broadcast purposes and were not made available for sale to the general public.

Despite the general popularity of their albums, it was however a single that propelled Matthews Southern Comfort to popular music fame, their version of Joni Mitchell's "Woodstock".

Mitchell wrote "Woodstock" about the famous music festival held in upstate New York in August 1969, an event widely regarded as a pivotal moment in the history of popular music.[22] Hers was one of three versions of the song released in 1970 and was included on her March 1970 album Ladies Of The Canyon. It was also the B-side of her single release, "Big Yellow Taxi". The second version, also released in March of that year, was by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young who had themselves performed at the festival, their version appearing as a track on their No.1 album Déjà Vu and as a single which reached No.11 in the Billboard Top 100 charts in May 1970.[23] Over the years it has become a staple of classic rock radio worldwide and is the best-known version in the United States. The third version by Matthews Southern Comfort became the best known version in the United Kingdom, and was the highest charting version of the song worldwide, reaching the top of the UK music charts in 1970.[1][2][3]

On Sunday 4 June 1970, MSC went into the BBC's radio studio to record a ‘live’ performance. They had three songs they wanted to record but the BBC wanted four,[24] so they worked out an arrangement of "Woodstock", a song that Matthews particularly liked after buying Mitchell's Ladies Of The Canyon album some weeks before. Matthews recalled in 1000 UK #1 Hits by Jon Kutner & Spencer Leigh: "I had bought Joni Mitchell's album and we had to do four songs on a BBC lunchtime show. We worked up an arrangement for “Woodstock” and the response was so good that we put it out as a single. Crosby, Stills & Nash's record had just come out and so we waited to see what happened to that first".[25]

"Woodstock" duly became that fourth song and the session was aired on the BBC on 28 June. There was a big listener response to the song; people wanted to know where they could buy the record, which of course did not yet exist. Howard and Blaikley wanted the band to record it with a view to putting it on their forthcoming album Later That Same Year but Matthews argued against that and wanted to keep the album as he had originally intended it to be. It was thus recorded and released as a single on the Uni label on 24 July 1970 backed by a Matthews composition, "Scion", but only when it was becoming obvious that the CSNY version was not going to be a British hit.

The day after its release, on Saturday 25 July 1970, MSC appeared on the TV programme Disco 2 with DJ Tommy Vance, where they performed "Woodstock". They also performed "Woodstock" on the BBC's Top Of The Pops on 13 August. Interest in the record was initially slow; it made a cautious entry to the UK charts at No.45 but then in September 1970 Radio One DJ Tony Blackburn made "Woodstock" his Record Of The Week and sales rocketed. "Woodstock" made it to the top of the British charts on 31 October 1970[26] replacing Freda Payne's "Band Of Gold" and stayed at the top of the charts for three weeks before being replaced by Jimi Hendrix' "Voodoo Chile". It became Matthews Southern Comfort's one and only No.1 record.

"Woodstock" also had widespread success outside the UK, charting in several European countries, as well as South Africa, New Zealand, and Australia.[5] It was also released as a single on the Decca label in the United States and Canada, this time coupled with a track from their Second Spring album, "Ballad of Obray Ramsey", peaking at No.23 in the Billboard charts on 16 May 1971.[27] The song also became the lead track on the US and Canadian versions of their Later That Same Year album, replacing the track "Jonah" which had been on the original UK version of the album.

Chart success and its attendant media coverage and obligations did not, however, sit at all easily with Matthews,[28] nor did the increasing spectre of being labelled as a country rock band. He became disenchanted with the dominant sound of pedal steel guitar in the band[29] and walked out on them during their tour to promote their third album Later That Same Year which had been released on 20 November.[30] His discontent came to a head a week later at the soundcheck for a sell-out gig at Birmingham Town Hall on Friday 27 November where he abruptly quit there and then and returned home to London by train,[31] leaving the band to continue that gig and one in Manchester the following day without their leader. Matters cannot have been made easier by the fact that in the Disc and Music Echo music weekly, which had hit the newsstands the day before on Thursday 26 November, Matthews had been quoted as saying that he was not denying he was about to leave the band.[32]

The original MSC lasted basically a year - in an interview published in 1971 in Disc and Music Echo, Matthews said "In the past year, the group was formed, did two albums, got a number one single and disbanded".[33] The remaining members of the group continued under the shortened name of Southern Comfort,[34] releasing three albums on the Harvest label, while Matthews again picked up the threads of his career. In early 1971, he joined forces again with former Fairport colleague Richard Thompson and Andy Roberts, the trio recording two concert sessions for the BBC and then later touring the US that summer. He also released his first solo album in his own name, If You Saw Thro' My Eyes on the Vertigo label, formed Plainsong with Roberts at the end of 1971, recording the album In Search of Amelia Earhart released in October 1972 and then went on to a new career in America in 1973,[35] recording numerous solo albums in the ensuing years.